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Person

Arthur Stephenson

A man wearing glasses, a light blue shirt, and a striped tie sits against a dark background, exuding a professional demeanor.

Director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in 1999 and chair of the Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board. A career propulsion engineer who had run the Space Shuttle Main Engine programme, he was chosen specifically because he sat outside the Mars Surveyor chain of command. The report his board produced is unusually direct about institutional, rather than purely technical, causes.

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